2012 Essentials SLOW file transfer, using all RAM

Hi all, I have a problem with a fresh install of Windows Server 2012 Essentials that I hope someone can help me with. I backed up all my data and am upgrading my WHS 2011 machine to 2012 Essentials. The install went fine and I was able to use the registry edit to keep my home network in a workgroup.

My problem is when I transfer files onto my storage spaces (parity), or a non storage space server folder, the transfer speed will be very quick (about 110 MB/sec) but a few seconds later the transfer will quickly decrease to less than 20 MB/sec.

I have disabled SMB signing as suggested but this has had no impact. The server has 2gb of RAM installed,I have noticed while transferring a file, the server RAM usage will jump from 40% utilization to over 90% utilization, once the ram reaches that high a usage (a matter of seconds) the transfer speed will decrease to single digits. When viewing the Memory tab of resource monitor the "Modified" (orange) is what increases to use up the entire free ram available. The free ram will show 0-5mb free. The CPU usage remains normal and does not appear to be a proble (10-20% cpu usage when transferring)

Storage spaces is probably the problem with the speed. I have the same issue when writing to it. Especially in parity it will have a lot of computing to do. If you read from it though you get much better speeds right?

For me the write speed isnt a big issue in my home environment but if it is an issue for you then you might want to look at a hardware raid solution or a different software solution such as flexraid which runs much faster as it does not compute the parity information right away.

Thank you for your reply. I have deleted the parity storage space and file transfer's to direct drives is fine. The Parity Storage Space would transfer at about 22 MB/sec. I created a Simple Storage Space and the file transfer is 90-115 MB/sec. So i will opt out of using Parity and just use a 2TB dedicated server backup drive like i was in WHS 2011. However, I have single digit file transfer speeds to the third partition on the OS drive. I did not have this problem on WHS 2011 and i was using this partition space fine with great performance. In 2012 Essentials the OS drive is 2TB partitioned 1. 100mb 2. 60GB os 3. 1,806GB. When I transfer files to this third partition the speed drops to about 8 MB/sec. This is the exact same setup I had with WHS 2011 and there was no performance problems before. Thanks for your help!

Instead of "free" RAM, how much is listed as "available"? This is more of a key; available RAM can be allocated by the OS quite quickly, but is used for caching otherwise.

Admittedly, I'd spend a couple bucks to go to 4GB. If you're currently only using a single 2GB module, adding a second would put your system in dual-channel mode, which would be a plus as well. I also agree with others that a hardware RAID card offers considerable benefits over Storage Spaces, but I'd start by upping RAM, as Windows will use what you have for caching, which should help some with file transfers.

Thanks for the suggestions, I ended up installing another drive that is IDE (as my mobo only had 4 sata ports) to use as a dedicated OS drive. I also increased my ram to 4GB. I ended up having to reinstall Essentials twice as the first reinstall created the system reseved partition on a different drive than it install the OS on. (go figure) After the second reinstall, the system is working great. Though the parity speed is still too slow for me to tolerate (20 MB/sec), I am using a 2TB drive as a server backup and put the other drives (2TB, 2TB, 1.5TB) in a Simple Storage Space. I am currently getting 100-110 MB/sec on average without disabling the SMB signing. I just transferred 225 GB in 35 minutes :-)